Install operating system

Here we assume you already have the necessary hardware for a cluster, as described in Acquire and deploy hardware. This article is part of a series called So you want to set up a lab.

To begin, you will either need 6 computers to host the central services, or you will need a hypervisor to host 6 VMs, or some mixture of the above. We recommend the hypervisor if you can bear it and the 6 physical computers if you can afford it (space, energy, money).

Hypervisor

We use (xxx), but any should do, including virtualbox, vmware, among many others.

Hypervisor

Foreman

Foreman is the node creation and provisioning server. We recommend Centos 6.3. Here is how to set one up: Foreman

Authentication server

We use 389, but other authentication systems will work fine, including kerberos.

• DNS

• Python - 2.7 series

Fileservers and NFS

We use XFS over NFS. We tend to hang several enclosures off a head node. We recommend SAS, which has finally come down in price, and RAID6 formatting. We tend to use enclosures that host 12 disks of 4TB each.

Portal and Security

We recommend setting up a portal and blocking all inbound access to all other computers. Use two portals at distinct geographical locations for added robustness.

• Perimeter security

Queuing system

We recommend free versions of Sun Grid Engine SGE. See our guidelines to get a queuing system working.

Add a new node to the cluster

How to spin up a new virtual machine

Add new disk to the cluster

Configure new disk

Deploy a workstation

Workstation Install

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